Viewing the 'Budgeting' Category

I'm looking for advice and would love to know everyone's situation. I have a budget that I'm sticking to but it's hard deciding when or what to pay or how long i can go without paying. Any help is much appreciated!!

I was reading about mystery shopping and I was wondering if it worth the time and money? Has anyone out that done this? Does anyone have any suggestions on where to start? I've been trying to look for something to do on the side but lately it's really hard to find anything that can fit into my schedule. Your opinion is much appreciated!

This is for all the parents out there. I wasn't aware of this until my friend told me today. There is a recall on children's Tylenol, children's zyrtec, and motrin. My 1 yr old came down with a fever last night and I gave him some Infant Tylenol drops twice. Since he still had a fever, I kept him home from daycare and I did my work from home. That's when my friend told me about the recall and sure enough my baby's medicine lot number was part of the recall. My son is still sick so I had to go out tonight to buy him the generic version (CVS brand).

If you need any more info on the recall and see if your bottle is part of the batch, check out this site -

Well, I finally did it. I finally sat down and wrote a weekly dinner list for my husband and I. I got tired of coming home from work and wondering what to eat. So before I went shopping, I wrote down some of the things we enjoyed eating -

My husband is from New Orleans so cajun cuisine has influenced my taste buds big time. My mother-in-law occassionally sends me cajun seasonings and ingredients. Since I get home around 6 from work, I wanted something that was quick and easy to make.

So I kicked off Sunday this week with beef and broccoli. All the ingredients you need cost less than $10 - some broccoli, seasoning packet for beef and broccoli (I use Kikkoman), one onion, white rice, and beef. For the beef, I buy brasciole or pepper steak which cost only $2-3 a packet. This is one of our favorites since our plates are always wiped clean.

Tonight we're having hamburgers and french fries. The rest of the week it's meatloaf, chicken parm, chili dogs, pizza, and lastly, pot roast.

What's on your plate? How do you plan your meals? How often do you go out to eat? :-)

Thank you to all who read my initial blog. I really enjoyed reading all of yours and hope that I will make this into a daily habit!

My husband and I have different attitudes when it comes to money. As I said before, he is a spender and I'm the saver. I take care of the finances for the family. I always tell him what's going on, what we can or cannot do. I believe our attitudes are due to the way our parents raised us. His family are very live now-spend now. My parents were immigrants and spent their entire lives being extremely frugal. They still go to the local flea markets in hopes that they will "win" something good, as my mom would put it haha. I've always been a saver and always looking for some kind of discount. For example, for my wedding, my dress was only $100 and my shoes were only $5. We had the wedding at my parents house and all the food were homemade. I just believe that any extra money we save I can use for something bigger and better. Nowadays we don't have much of a saving because all the money goes to daycare, the house, the car, and medical bills. I guess all I really want is to have some security again and not have to worry about the surprises for tomorrow. I'm patiently waiting for 2011 when my car is finally paid off :-)

Ok, what is there to say about me? I'm your simple everyday person. Personally, I've got the cutest baby boy ever (as all moms say that about their kids, lol). I've been with my husband for 5 years and married for two. Professionally, I've been working in the insurance industry for almost six years. My husband works in the safety and health management field. We live in a modest home in New Jersey. We're both hard workers and take lots of pride in the things we have.

I created this blog to help me stay on track with our finances. This past year has been rough on us financially. It seemed like every time we turned around, there was a new challenge to face. We had just bought a house when we discovered we were having a baby. Then due to some pregnancy complications, I had to be out of work for awhile, therefore less pay coming in and lots of medical bills. Then at the same time, we had to use all our savings to fix the water heater. There was so many issues that we had to rely on our credit cards. Then earlier this year, we were still getting it with new surprises: we needed a new dryer, my husband got into a minor accident, and we had to fix the plumbing - all happening at once! When it rains, it pours. A year later, the water heater is finally paid off. I hope that this dark rain cloud has lifted.

I created a budget list of all our debt and I'm going to start putting aside some emergency funds again. Hopefully I will beable to build something up again. It's hard because we are still catching up on some bills. Plus I'm the saver and my husband is the spender.

That's all for now. Please let me know what you think! Best wishes to all!